General Movie Questions (and hopefully answers)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > General Movie Questions (and hopefully answers)

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Reich Joyce posted:

So is anyone else confused about the part in The Dark Knight where that truck with one of Jokers henchman gets completly crushed due to Batman's attacks and kind of goes against his no kill rule? I haven't read a Bat comic since Knightfall so my whole understanding of Batman' no kill rule is based on this new movie. Did I miss something? Did batman not cause this( what appears to be a straight up death) directly? Enlighten me.

Which truck? The dump truck? Because that one isn't completely crushed, just disabled.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2008 23:16

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:07

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Reich Joyce posted:

I just remember one truck that the entire passenger seat gets crushed in the tunnel. It hits the ceiling of the tunnel and completely destroys the driver seat, passenger part of the truck.

Yeah, that's the dump truck. The Batmobile comes up from behind it and crushes the back end into the ceiling, not the front end.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2008 23:25

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Encryptic posted:

Is there, or will there be a release of There Will Be Blood in a real DVD case, instead of the craptastic cardboard case it was initially released in? Love the movie, but the DVD case sucks. I would have paid more for the "Special Edition" they had at Wal-Mart when I bought the movie but even that had the cardboard case.

As far as I know, the Special Edition is the only version in a cardboard case. The bare-bones version is in a regular plastic one.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2008 20:03

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Vulpes posted:

This sounds much more like a vampire/virus movie or something with evil blood cells than Mission Impossible.

No, it was a booby-trapped microscope, nothing supernatural. I've seen this scene as well, but I can't remember what movie it was.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2008 02:54

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

AlternateAccount posted:

Mary Harron is a horrible loving hack and made a mediocre movie instead of an actual good one when she had plenty of talent, money and source material at her disposal. The fact that she tries to outline a specific interpretation after the fact instead of comprehending the idea that the ambiguity of the entire concept is the lynchpin of the whole goddamn thing indicates that maybe she needed to go back and read it one more time. If you weren't someone who had read the book, there wasn't much way for that movie to make any loving sense. If not for Bale it would have been basically meritless.

What the hell are you talking about? I never read the book, but it was pretty easy for me to understand that Bateman's murders were all in his head. In fact, I can't imagine anything about American Psycho being the least bit hard to understand.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2008 08:30

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

AlternateAccount posted:

Look at the post a few back where Harron says OH HE REALLY WAAAAAS A MURDERER!

Oh, I'm sorry, I missed that.

That's really bizarre, though. It's like Ridley Scott saying that Deckard was a Replicant in Blade Runner. Have these directors not seen their own movies?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2008 09:43

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Ichi the Killer:

So... what was the deal with Karen? Was she really raped, or was that a fake memory? If she was really raped, does that mean that she was the same girl from Ichi's fake memory? Or was Ichi's memory fake?

Casino Royale:

What happened to Felix Leiter? Why doesn't he capture Le Chiffre as planned? When Vesper gets word that he has made contact with Le Chiffre, is she telling the truth, and Le Chiffre just escaped, or was she lying? And if she was lying, then why didn't Leiter make contact? Also, was Mathis guilty or not? Or is that to be dealt with in the sequel?

# ¿ Sep 5, 2008 05:47

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Nimec posted:

Maybe this was already answered somewhere, but I just saw a commercial for a movie called Quarantine that had scene-by-scene recreations of [rec]. Is it going to be the same movie reshot with different actors in English or is it just a spin-off or what?
And isn't [rec] a little new to be remade?

[rec] is a foreign movie. Foreign movies are game for American remakes as soon as they go into pre-production.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2008 05:38

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Ape Agitator posted:

It's really only as racist as practically every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism, [...] But really, it's only as racist as all the other ones (which in my opinion are).

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are saying that every movie that deals even tangentially with terrorism is racist. Is that what you meant to say?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2008 06:27

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Ape Agitator posted:

racist Hollywood

So do you think it is possible for Hollywood to make a good movie about terrorism that isn't racist? If so, how? If not, then how is it fair to call most Hollywood terrorism movies racist if they are already as non-racist as it is possible for them to be without sucking?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2008 22:31

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Ape Agitator posted:

What I think has to happen first is the "Arab For No Reason" characters to pop up from time to time.

How would that be any any different from the "good one" cliche that you were talking about earlier?

I guess the stumbling point for me is that I don't think a movie about heroic characters (of any race) fighting evil Middle Easterners is automatically racist. And this holds true, I think, for both "serious" movies like The Kingdom and action fluff movies like True Lies.

On a related note, would you classify Full Metal Jacket as racist? How about We Were Soldiers?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2008 23:57

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

quote:

True Lies is not a bad example, really. I love the film but it's hardly a film to cherish for diversity. It does have a version of the "good one" in Faisal, but otherwise, is there anything to suggest that Harry not simply shoot any other Middle Eastern characters on sight? I mean, they're all terrorists and the bad guy is basically described as even worse than the average terrorist. Great film, great action, not very progressive racially.

With regard to FMJ, it's a war film and broadly portrays the vietnamese as combatants (or whores). Could one infer that all Vietnamese were in the conflict? Perhaps, but only so far as you could assume all Americans were also. We Were Soldiers attempted (to varying levels of success) to show glimpses of the other side. Again, one might consider it as inferring that all Vietnamese were in the military but considering it was a conflict between the Americans and Vietnam, I don't think it was racist in portraying Vietnamese people being in the NVA.

Perhaps I misunderstanding what you mean by asking me about those two movies?

The reason I picked those two movies was, Full Metal Jacket is probably the most cynical Vietnam War movie and We Were Soldiers is one of the most romantic. Full Metal Jacket doesn't seem to regard any character save Joker, either American or Vietnamese, with anything except bemused detachment. Soldiers, by contrast, shows the American characters as being almost endlessly noble, and although it made some attempts to humanize the NVA, basically just used them as "people Mel Gibson shoots." I would say that Soldiers is racist in the same way old movies about cowboys killing Indians were racist. They were, but mainly due to lazyness of storytelling and shallowness rather than hatred. Full Metal Jacket, I wouldn't call racist at all.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2008 03:45

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

Ape Agitator posted:

Should Indy movies be chided for their non-progressive stances? No, they're a throwback to a time where storytelling was loaded with it. Just like Jonny Quest and the newest King Kong are wonderfully racist because it's such a perfect reflection of classic high adventure where natives are evil savages deserving of being smited by white fists. Just like Quentin Tarantino movies aren't (in my opinion) deserving of chiding for their exploitation attributes because that's a conscious goal and he's naked about it.

So... the Indy movies are racist, but... it's the good kind of racism? I don't understand this at all. My mind is literally boggling.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2008 12:15

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

InfiniteZero posted:

It's his day job.

I think he means, why is Matt Murdoch acting as prosecuter in the beginning of Daredevil when for the rest of the movie he is a defense attorney? Also, he is prosecuting a rape case, so why does he refer to the victim as "my client"?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2008 18:21

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

There Will Be Blood: What is the significance of the title? I mean, there was blood, so it is technically accurate, but what does it mean? Is it something boring, like blood being a metaphor for oil or oil being a metaphor for blood or something stupid like that? Or is Paul Anderson just a really big fan of the Saw movies?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2008 03:14

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

Well, the Italians did a certain kind of Western better than Hollywood did. But in the spaghetti Western the American West is really just a canvas on which chaotic amorality can be displayed. The American Western---even the Hollywood studio Western---offers a far broader view. Ford's idealism, Hawks' mythmaking, Fuller's ambivalence, Ray's...however you want to characterise Johnny Guitar (1954), and so on. And that's not even touching the whole let's-do-the-whole-thing-over-with-us-as-the-bad-guys thing that characterises post-studio era Westerns. Or Western kitsch (Zachariah (1971), say).

The Hollywood Western has, or has had, pretty much everything American film has ever had. The Italian Western has always been a subgenre ghetto of exploitation cinema. The Italians do exploitation better than Hollywood does---but then again pretty much everybody does exploitation films better than mainstream Hollywood does.

I don't think you are really being fair (I mean, between Sergio Leone and John Ford, who would you really reduce to being an exploitation filmmaker?), but you're right about one thing: the Italian Westerns used the American West as a canvas to tell stories on, whereas the American Westerns tend to focus on actually telling stories about the American West. I'd say that that makes American Westerns the ones that are really limited.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2008 02:48

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

Er, neither. But of the two Leone. No question. What's your point?

Wait, so Sergio Leone, a man famous for directing Italian westerns (which according to you are a subset of exploitation films), is not an exploitation director? You'll have to explain that one.

Anyway, I was all ready to type out a big explanation of how John Ford was an exploitation filmmaker, but then I checked the Wikipedia entry for "Exploitation film" and I guess I was wrong about what exploitation films are. I'd considered them to be any films that were made very quickly and cheaply in order to exploit audience interests, (by which definition Ford would certainly qualify), but according to Wikipedia, the term "exploitation film" refers specifically to films that exploit the audience's taste for sex or violence. So I guess you win this round.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2008 05:41

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

Leone's films were not, by and large, exploitation films. Per un Pugno di Dollari (1964) (A Fistful of Dollars) looks, feels, and was produced very much in the style of the typical spaghetti Western, and is a film you could call an exploitation film without blushing. But by the end of the Man With No Name trilogy, Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (1966) (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) is called a spaghetti Western by convention but it's a (comparatively) high-budget film with an actively anti-exploitation mood. His later Western films...the comedies and C'Era una Volta il West (1968) (Once Upon a Time in the West) are called spaghetti Westerns entirely by virtue of the fact that they're Italian-made films set in the American West; they have virtually nothing to do in terms of style, theme or production methods with exploitation films. And of course Once Upon a Time in America (1984) isn't a Western (like his earlier films, not discussed here).

So I'll grant you that he made one or maybe two films that we can comfortably call exploitation films. So if you ask me to call him or John Ford (who made no films that could by any stretch of the imagination be called exploitation films) an exploitation filmmaker I'd pick Leone. But I wouldn't say without qualification that Leone is an exploitation filmmaker.

This is what I'm saying: Leone made Italian westerns. Not only that, he made the Italian westerns, the three films that spawned and are representative of the entire subgenre. So if Leone's Italian westerns aren't exploitation films, how can you say that Italian westerns are a subgenre of exploitation films, rather than of westerns in general?

[edit: I misread your post. I thought you were saying that none of the Man With No Name films were exploitation films, which I would have agreed with. So instead I'll ask: what, exactly, was A Fistful of Dollars exploiting? What made it an exploitation film instead of just another action movie set in the American west? I can see calling later Italian westerns like Django exploitation films, since they were mostly exploiting American audiences newfound taste for violent Italian westerns like A Fistul of Dollars. But I don't think that makes Dollars itself an exploitation film.]

quote:

I think you don't understand either what kind of films Ford made, or how the studio system worked in general...or I suppose possibly both.

Maybe I don't, because I don't understand how William Beaudine cranking out three or four generic westerns every year makes him an exploitation filmmaker, but John Ford cranking out three or four generic war movies every year doesn't. Is it just because Ford was a great director who made genuinely great films every now and then, whereas Beaudine was a hack?

We Are Citizen fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Oct 27, 2008

# ¿ Oct 27, 2008 21:01

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

Because I don't have some addlepated notion that statements about Westerns in general, Italian Westerns in particular, or Italian Westerns made by Sergio Leone need to follow some absolutist stricture as decreed by We Are Citizen.

Spaghetti Westerns are a subgenre of exploitation film. Sergio Leone made Spaghetti Westerns. Not all of Leone's films are exploitation films. The End.

How about this: Once Upon a Time in the West is a western. Once Upon a Time in the West was made in Italy. Once Upon a Time in the West is not an exploitation film. Therefore, not all Italian westerns are exploitation films. The End.

quote:

It was made dirt cheap and featured what was for the time sensational violence. That's pretty much the definition of an exploitation film. It's also a fairly well-made film, although neither as original nor as technically accomplished as Leone's later films.

John Ford didn't make exploitation films. He made, by and large, comparatively big-budget and very mainstream (critically and commercially) films.

So budget is the issue? William Beaudine's films weren't any less mainstream than Ford's, they just had lower budgets. Hell, A Fistful of Dollars was a mainstream film. Westerns were extremely popular when Dollars was released, and although it was a slightly revisionist take on the genre, it was a huge success.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2008 23:31

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

Okay, sure. What's your point?

It seems to me that "Italian westerns are a subset of exploitation films" and "All Italian westerns are exploitation films" mean basically the same thing, and that the first statement can't be true if the second is false.

SubG posted:

Are you still objecting to my original comments that Italian Westerns didn't have the breadth of expression that Hollywood Westerns have

Yes. To be specific, my argument was that Italian westerns were less limited than American westerns, since Italians westerns weren't usually about the American West the same way American westerns were. I'm not saying that Italian westerns were by and large better films than American ones though, because that would be ridiculous.

I probably should have dropped the argument as soon as you clarified that you didn't include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West in your statements about Italian westerns, since I agree that almost all Italian westerns not made by Leone were exploitation films with less breadth of expression than American westerns. The only thing left to argue about is whether A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More count as "real films" or "exploitation films."

# ¿ Oct 29, 2008 06:26

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

That's silly even for a strawman.

Why? If Italian westerns are a subset of exploitation films (which you said they were), doesn't it follow that all Italian westerns are exploitation films? And if not all Italian westerns are exploitation films (which you also said), then doesn't it follow that Italian westerns are not a subset of exploitation films?

Dogs are a subset of mammals. Therefore, all dogs are mammals. That's the logic I'm using. If it is flawed, please correct me.

SubG posted:

...which is to say, your argument is based on a baffling unfamiliarity with or misreading of the Hollywood Western. And Italian Westerns, for that matter.

Maybe I have misread Hollywood westerns, since I've never been a huge fan of them. Despite that, I've enjoyed on some level every Italian western I've ever seen. This is probably because I've never really been that interested in the concept of the American West itself. Hollywood westerns tend to focus a lot on every aspect of the setting- land grabbers, gamblers, cattle drives, and so on. Italian westerns tend to be much more focused: they are about gunslingers. I can totally see how this makes Italian westerns more limited than Hollywood westerns. But it also makes them almost entirely free of the baggage that Hollywood westerns are saddled with (so to speak).

SubG posted:

Although I'm not entirely sure I want to explore what you're hiding in that phrase `real films', I'm guessing this is just a false dichotomy.

My point exactly. Both terms are ridiculous. It's like the retarded "film vs. movie" thing.

It seems ridiculous to me that you (SubG) can toss A Fistful of Dollars in the Exploitation Film Bin and then turn around and put The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on the _____ Film Pedestal, where "_____" is whatever you want to call movies that aren't exploitation films.

Basically, the more I learn about "exploitation films" the less I like the phrase.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2008 22:32

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

FitFortDanga posted:

I'm trying to figure out if you ever had a point to begin with, and I think the answer is no.

Technically, I didn't have a point of my own. I just thought that SubG's point (that Italian westerns are just exploitation films) was wrong. The stuff about Italian westerns being better than Hollywood westerns was just my personal opinion, which I opviously can't back up with facts.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2008 23:36

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

So your argument is based on the idea that film genres are defined by formal prepositional logic? Really?

...and now you're more or less asserting exactly the opposite position you
were advocating a couple posts ago (`I'd say that that makes American Westerns the ones that are really limited')?

I'm really just trying to keep track of what you're trying to say here.

I'm saying that both are reasonable positions, depending on how you look at it. Italian westerns are more limited than Hollywood westerns in some ways, but the reverse is also true.

SubG posted:

I'm not doing that.

You're not doing what? You're not saying that A Fistful of Dollars is an exploitation film and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly isn't?

SubG posted:

A less charitable person than I might suggest that you should in the future endeavour to learn the meaning of terms of art before attempting to lecture others on their use.

Well, the hypothetical person that your hypothetical person is arguing with could make the counter-argument that "exploitation film" is not a term of art, but a term of disparagement for certain kinds of art. Just because I (oops, I mean, my hypothetical counterpart) was wrong about which types of movies the term "exploitation film" applied to, it is still pretty obviously a term of disparagement, used mainly for dismissing films as not worthy of criticism.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2008 02:08

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

This hypothetical person really should listen to my advice about figuring out what a term means before lecturing on its use.

I'm trying to figure out what exploitation films are. I thought I had it after reading the Wikipedia article on the subject, but that article must have been wrong if you insist that "exploitation film" is not a term of disparagment, since the article states that "Exploitation film is a type of film that eschews the expense of quality productions in favor of making films inexpensively, attracting viewers by exciting their more prurient interests." That right there draws a dichotomy between "exploitation film" and "quality production."

And if the term "exploitation film" isn't necessarily a bad thing, why did you feel the need to exempt those Italian westerns you liked (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West) from your earlier claim that Italian westerns were [a subset of] exploitation films? I'm not trying to call you on anything, I genuinely want to understand your position.

Since this is the General Movie Questions thread, I'll ask: What, exactly, is an exploitation film, and what conotations does that phrase carry?

# ¿ Oct 30, 2008 04:14

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

SubG posted:

This has nothing to do with me liking or disliking either film. I mean ask any longtime reader of CineD...with the exception of NeuroticErotica I'm probably the person who can be found most frequently lauding exploitation films and various other genre flicks (Troma films, Hammer films, Full Moon flicks, Shaw Brothers films, blacksploitation films, luche films, and so forth).

Huh. In that case, I guess I don't really have anything to argue with you about.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2008 22:41

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

therochester posted:

Why are so many Italian films dubbed?

In the case of Italian Westerns, at least, because a lot of times the casts are made up of actors who don't speak the same languages as each other. So they would just film the movie with everyone speaking their own language, then dub it for release.

# ¿ May 27, 2009 17:17

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

So, if a novelist writes a screenplay based on his own novel, and the screenplay is nominated for an Oscar, would it be Best Original Screenplay or Best Adapted Screenplay? Has this ever happened?

# ¿ Jul 28, 2010 01:28

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:07

We Are Citizen: Apr 5, 2008

kapalama posted:

Thanks for that link.

Speaking of 'Suicide Club':

1. It is just Japanese slasher porn? Is it 'porn with a plot'? (I guess the question is, is it 'thinking man's slasher porn', like porn in period costumes? Or is it, rather, a movie that needs to be told in that genre to say what it wants to say?

2. Is all slasher porn violently misogynistic (or is that misogynistically violent?), or does Japan slasher porn just take it to the next level of violent misogyny?

Could you clarify what you mean by "slasher porn"?

# ¿ Aug 3, 2010 17:37

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